When an actor like Sam Elliott lands a leading role these days, the central if regrettable question that always arises is whether he can “carry” the film. Would Elliott deliver the kind of raw, breakout performance that nets him an Oscar nom? Would this be his long-awaited chance to transcend the worn-out Cowboy of his past?
On paper, Elliot’s turn in The Hero appears to be just that. He plays a character, Lee Hayfield, constructed with maybe only him in mind — an over-the-hill Western icon navigating a modern world, wrestling with his checkered past. Lee dresses in flannel shirts and skinny jeans, smokes too much weed and drinks too much whiskey. He passes out on the couch in front of the TV some nights, dreaming of onscreen redemption only to wake to the cruel sobriety he’s carved out for himself, a lonely, frail septuagenarian stuck doing BBQ sauce commercial voice-overs.
For some, Elliott’s unmistakable, leather-thick drawl will summon all of the nostalgia. You only need to hear his voice fill out the speakers in the opening scene to recall the immortal wisdom he supplied as The Stranger in The Big Lebowski. And yet Elliott embodies Lee with such casual grace that you might miss it. In an early scene with his daughter, played by Krysten Ritter, he doesn’t need to do very much speaking to bring out the emotion — his narrow, wet, gray-blue eyes do it for him. With his slender frame and full gray mane — the legendary mustache still in tact — Lee looks like an old, matted sheepdog coming in from the rain.
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Evan Klonsky 